Hi all – I hope you had a fabulous Christmas, NYE and that 2011 is treating you well! Now that Christmas has past I thought I would share some of the gifts I gave and received…

Saturday: My mum gave my 17 month old niece a front bike seat and a helmet for Christmas – she had her first go it on Boxing day and loved it. I’m unsure of the brand that mum bought but here is one type sold in Australia.

Friday: A little while ago I mentioned that while on holiday in NYC I discovered uncooked cards and we entertained ourselves for nearly an hour reading evey card they had and laughing like crazy people! Well in that same bookstore I came across the perfect book for one of my brothers – What’s Your Poo Telling You? by Richman & Sheth M.D. From the book’s introduction I knew this was a Christmas present he would appreciate:

While this books primary aim is to liberate poo from the undeserving position in the societal sewer, it also seeks to free those individuals who have until now been unable to share their love for poo with others…

Thursday: probably my favourite gift this Christmas was from my younger brother. I didn’t realise I needed a Cartoon Panda iPhone speaker until I got one – it is so cute and I love that you adjust the volume by squeezing its ears!

Wednesday: one of the gifts I received for Christmas was a Sydney Writers’ Centre gift certificate. I just decided tonight that I am going to do the Magazine Writing Summer School course – looking forward to learning the secrets of how to write for magazines and newspapers!

Tuesday: Have you been watching season 2 of Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam on SBS on Thursday nights? If you haven’t I highly recommended it. My dad is off to Vietnam in a couple of months so a copy of season 1 was the perfect gift. Make sure you watch this Thursday because Luke is visiting Sapa, which was one of my favourite places when we were in Vietnam last year.

Monday: Yesterday my mum and D went hang gliding – they had both previously told me they wanted to try it, so I gave them Sydney Hang Gliding Centre gift certificates. They had an awesome flight off the world famous ‘Bald Hill’ at Stanwell Park. It looked so fabulous I’m even thinking about giving it a go!

Ok so it dawned on me yesterday that Christmas has crept up on me and I was completely unprepared. However, I went a fair way to rectifying that last night – I now know where we will be having Christmas lunch, our Christmas tree is up, a couple of presents wrapped (an addiction to online shopping means I have a fabulous gift giving cupboard to dip into) and some further online Christmas shopping has occurred!

Now I’m kind of feeling Christmassy – so I thought this week’s theme can be some of the new Christmas things I have discovered recently….

Saturday: Just discovered a fabulous shop Newspaper Taxi – its located in Newtown, Sydney but also has an online shop, where I found some beautiful christmas decorations:

Or feeling crafty? How about these sew your own Christmas decoration kits:

And also check out these great handmade “Aussie” Chirstmas cards made exclusively for Newspaper Taxi:

Friday: I spent weeks leading up to Christmas last year trying to find a gorgeous (and unique) Christmas outfit for my niece’s first Christmas – of course I didn’t know about Etsy then, now I’m spoiled for choice…

Thursday: ‘tis the season for giving, so make sure you don’t forget to leave a gift under the wishing tree (or buy an ecard).

Did you know the Kmart Wishing Tree Appeal is Australia’s largest Christmas gift appeal. In the last 22 years the Appeal has collected more than 4.9 million gifts for people in need. Last year, the Appeal alone raised more than 407,000 gifts nationally, for distribution via The Salvation Army.

You can leave gifts right up until Christmas Eve.

Wednesday: Who doesn’t love Christmas crackers (or bon bons as they are called in our family). This year why don’t you add beautiful handcrafted CrackerHappy crackers to your Chirstmas table – the gifts are so much better and there are no lame jokes!

Tuesday: So it may be getting a little late to get on the advent calendar bandwagon given its the 7th of December, but better later than never – right?? I’ve found a couple of DIY advent calendars that are kind of cool:

• You send amillionideas $5USD and she will send you a PDF so you can create your own Advent Calendar made of square boxes, which you can fill with whatever you wish!

• $6.50USD to JulieMarie will get you a prinitable download of this very cute Starry Trees Advent Calendar:

• HomemadeHappinessNL will get you in the spirit (for $4.78USD) with these printable Woodland Advent envelopes, which you can fill with a small treat!

Monday: after a big online shopping session last night I thought it would be good to start the week with something FREE!

The lovely Jess from Epheriell Designs has put together a list of some gorgeous free printable gift tags.

I think my favourites are the ones from Paper Crave – which ones do you like??